1. Field
The following description relates to controlling signal interference between networks in a personal area network.
2. Description of Related Art
In a typical wireless communication system, a signal generated in a transmission end may be transmitted to a reception end via a wireless channel. During transmission, the transmission signal may be transformed and/or distorted due to various types of other signal sources within the wireless channel, thereby causing a receive error in the reception end.
Signal sources causing the receive error in the wireless communication system may be generally classified into two categories: white noise and other signal interference. The white noise may correspond to a signal that has a mostly constant frequency component in a relatively wide frequency range and generally exists in the nature. The other signal interference may correspond to a signal that is transmitted from another wireless communication system to distort a received signal of the wireless communication system.
Based on the communication range and usage, for instance, a wireless communication network may be classified as a mobile cellular network, a wireless local area network, a personal area network, and/or the like. In particular, interest on the personal area network is increasing according to an increase in a communication between a terminal and a peripheral device and a communication between sensors around a human body and a mobile hub.
Wireless communications may employ a scheme of constraining a determined frequency to a specified protocol and thereby using the predetermined frequency, and a scheme of using a predetermined frequency band by sharing a variety of protocols when a predetermined criterion is satisfied. A personal area network generally employs the scheme of sharing the variety of protocols between the above two frequency use schemes.
In the case of a band using a frequency sharing scheme such as, for instance, an industrial scientific medical (ISM) band, signal interference between communication systems may be great due to signals from various communication systems, for example, heterogeneous protocols. In particular, since various communication protocols, for example, a wireless local area network (WLAN), Bluetooth, ZigBee, or the like, are present in a band of 2.4 GHz, an interference occurrence probability may be relatively high.
Signal interference may also occur between wireless apparatuses in the personal area network using the same protocol. In the personal area network using a low power communication due to a relatively small number of neighboring nodes, when wideband interference occurs due to a high power signal of wireless fidelity (WiFi) and/or the like, a number of frequency channels that may be used by the personal area network in order to avoid the interference may decrease. When a frequency band available to avoid interference decreases, a communication between a neighboring node and a network hub may not be smoothly performed.